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With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. Cherry harvest is upon us here in the Pacific Northwest. According to Washington Fruit Commission president, BJ Thurlby, so far, things are looking pretty good …

BJ THURLBY … “Well, things for cherry harvest 2017 look pretty exceptional. We’ve got a crop on the trees over here, that’s for sure. I’ve seen bigger crops, I think, on the trees, but I haven’t seen a season start where we have cherries in every single district. And, usually there’s some weather malady that happens either in the winter or in the spring, and we had a cold winter, but we ended up having a fairly nice spring. So, pretty much every grower I’ve talked to thinks they’ve got an average to maybe a little bit larger sized crop on the trees which means great cherries, it means potential for a large crop.”

Thurlby says the colder winter played a role in the start of harvest …

BJ THURLBY … “It absolutely did. As an example of the difference between this year and last year, we started picking and shipping on the 20th of May last year. And so, here we sit on the 9th of June and we haven’t even started to pick yet.”

Thurlby says as is the case every year, there’s really only one thing that could change their promising outlook …

BJ THURLBY … “We still have a long way to go and cherries are so susceptible to weather that you look good one week and the next week something happens. You know, this time of year, that something is rain. And so we’re hoping that we don’t get the same rain that our friends over in the Seattle region are getting, ha ha.”

Thurlby says this was a more normal winter than the warmer weather we experienced last year.

Listen tomorrow for how the exceptional California harvest could impact Northwest growers.